Food Habits

The Giant Tortoise's diet includes grasses, forbs, and leaves on bushes. They have been known to eat several peculiar foods, such as stinging nettles and crab-apple like fruits of the manzanillo tree, which burn human skin. Individuals that live primarily in warm, but completely dry, lava soils in the lowlands of the Galapagos, often wander over long paths to the volcanic highlands, where they have access to drinking water and an abundance of plants. They may wallow there for hours, drinking and swimming lazily. At night, however, they return down the same path to the lowlands.